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A Conversation with Ray Bradbury

A classic formulation of culture was offered by the philosopher and poet Matthew Arnold in his 1869 essay, "Culture and Anarchy." Arnold identified a core mission of humanities education:
"The men of culture are the true apostles of equality. The great men of culture are those who have had a passion for diffusing, for making prevail, for carrying from one end of society to the other, the best knowledge, the best ideas of their time; who have laboured to divest knowledge of all that was harsh, uncouth, difficult, abstract, professional, exclusive; to humanise it, to make it efficient outside the clique of the cultivated and learned, yet still remaining the best knowledge and thought of the time, and a true source, therefore, of sweetness and light" (Arnold 1882).
Bradbury's account mixes references to authors that Arnold would have recognized as "great men of culture" (such as Shakespeare or Steinbeck) with beloved creators of popular fiction (such as L. Frank Baum and Edgar Rice Burroughs). Bradbury describes libraries not simply as repositories of "great works" but also as places where people live, work, and pursue their passions. This focus on our everyday use of libraries brings us much closer to the second sense of culture.
for more, see:
scalar.usc.edu/anvc/flowsofreading